Key 2016 Election Issues: Employee Pay

Management

Video

10/18/2016

Transcript:

One of the ones that we hear a lot of questions from clients on is, again, what we call employee pay, which is kind of very broadly a lot of the requirements that face an employer relative to hiring and firing, and paying their personnel. And it's an area that, again, Hillary and Donald have pretty significant different points of view on.

Minimum wage is one that's getting a lot of discussion in the election cycle. Hillary has publicly supported a $12 federal minimum wage, but has also expressed support for the $15 minimum wage that is being put in place in some locales around the country.

Trump has been less supportive of a federal minimum wage increase. He's said several times he really thinks minimum wage should be the purview at the state level or really managed at the state level. However, he has voiced some recent support for a $10 federal minimum wage.

The overtime rule which, again, a lot of employers are familiar with now, which will be going into effect later this year, Hillary's been very supportive of that.

Kind of expanding the number of employees that are eligible for overtime. Trump hasn't said very much at all on that so the assumption is he's not a significant advocate of that because it's seen, at least in some circles, as a relatively significant incremental burden on business.

One of the things Hillary's been very outspoken about has been paid equity, making sure that there's fairness in pay. We could certainly anticipate if she were to become president that being a significant initiative that she would push. Trump hasn't said a lot on that either, other than his daughter has talked about really wanting to make sure and supporting that equal pay for equal work.

Another area that there's been a lot of discussion about has been paid sick leave or paid leave programs. Hillary's been, again, a really significant proponent of this. She's talked a lot about the potential for a paid medical leave or family leave of 12 weeks at two-thirds of your pay, and notably has indicated she would pay with that via a separate standalone tax on wealthy Americans.

Trump hasn't said a whole lot about that, although he did come out recently with a proposal for a paid maternity leave for a period of time, but in contrast to Hillary, said he would pay for that through working to combat unemployment insurance fraud as opposed to financing it via an incremental tax. There is an ability to push some of these things through the regulatory process, so there would be absolutely an ability to move some of these things along more quickly than what happened in some of the other areas. This is one of those areas where often the requirements are applicable to employers of any size and in any industry.

So it's an area that it's really important that they stay on top of, they stay abreast of, they use resources like we provide to track things, and that they use a company like ours to make sure that they're meeting their requirements. It's really hard in this area to do it by yourself. It's really hard, in particular, if you're a business that has operations in various cities or various states because, not only is the federal government doing things in this space, states are as well. Individual cities are instituting their own minimum wage rules, their own paid sick leave rules.

So this is an area where working with a partner like a Paychex is really, really helpful in terms of keeping track of all the things that are going on, which again, can be very, very daunting in this area. And then we have a lot of ability to help clients in terms of a little bit more of the direction in terms of how you might want to approach some of these things. And a lot of products, time and attendance systems, and things like that, that really make a lot of the requirements in this area, in particular, much easier to meet your compliance requirements based on a lot of the tools and products that we're continually updating to meet some of the requirements here.

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